On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [84]
He brazened it out. “So what do you think? Like this job any better than the last one? I imagine the perks are incomparable.” It was surprisingly hard to dredge up a cocky, careless grin.
He relaxed when he felt her snort against his shoulder. “Bless your little heart. Your ego trip is a bumpy one, isn’t it?”
“Not usually,” Devon confessed. “Mostly it’s a pretty smooth ride. Lately, though, with Market . . . And Tucker, too . . .”
Lilah clucked soothingly, like a mother hen. Devon wanted to mock her, but found himself unreasonably soothed by it, so he didn’t.
For once uninterested in talking about himself, Devon said, “You want to take this to the bed? I think we can make it now.”
“My knees are starting to get a little sore,” Lilah agreed.
They hauled their weary, well-used bodies up off the floor and fell into Lilah’s bed. Devon stretched like a cat against the bazillion-thread-count sheets and congratulated himself again on reaching a level of success where Egyptian cotton against his skin was a normal, everyday occurrence.
With gentle persistence, Lilah curled herself into his side and said, “Do you want to talk about Tucker? We never did manage to have that discussion about how he should be spending his time.”
Devon froze. She wanted him to participate in the planning, take some responsibility. He understood that, but the idea of it terrified him. He was bound to fuck it up. “Not really. I agreed to hang out with you two. Can’t we figure it out as we go?”
“Sure. That’s good enough for me,” Lilah said, although her tone indicated something more along the lines of “For now.”
Devon decided to take what he could get. Seeking a change of subject that would be sufficiently distracting to get Lilah off his back about Tucker and other tricky topics, Devon said, “So tell me about this mythical Aunt Bertie you’re always talking about.”
“Aunt Bertie. What can I say about her? She and Uncle Roy took me in when I was a baby. My mother, her sister, got in trouble with the high school quarterback. He ran off before I was born, and my mother had me, dumped me with Bertie, who was already married and settled, and took off after him. For all I know, they’re living happily ever after in Timbuktu.”
“Jesus,” Devon said, shocked despite himself. “Oh, come on, don’t give me the eyes. That’s definitely worth a little blasphemy. I’m sorry that happened to you, Lilah Jane.”
“I’m not,” she said stoutly. There was no hesitation in her voice or regret in her clear green eyes. “I was better off. Aunt Bertie and Uncle Roy raised me, along with a pack of cousins, on their farm. Everything I know about cooking, human nature, life in general, is due to my Aunt Bertie.”
“You miss her,” he said, a sinking feeling dragging at his guts. He didn’t want to examine it.
“Of course I do,” Lilah said. Then she sighed. “Well, I do and I don’t. Aunt Bertie is a . . . fairly forceful personality. My uncle calls her Hurricane Bertie. She’s one of those people who knows exactly the right thing to do in every situation—and always does it.”
“Not very comfortable to live with.”
“Not all the time, no. I got pretty good at it, though.”
She fell silent and Devon rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling, contemplating this new information. Whatever Lilah wanted him to believe—hell, whatever she believed herself—he could read between the lines about that childhood in Virginia.
In a small town like that? Her mother’s fall from grace would’ve been a scandal that dogged Lilah’s footsteps everywhere she went. And life with Aunt Bertie and her brood . . . Devon felt a sudden, swift tug of kinship for the lonely little girl who didn’t quite fit in, but wanted to, so badly that she ruthlessly suppressed her desire for excitement, passion, adventure, to live the safe, normal life her mother couldn’t.
And he thought he understood a little better why Lilah was so quick to jump in when it looked like Devon was about to let Tucker go.
Lilah